Contributors

September 3, 2014

Introducing MICA – My Intelligent Communication Accessory

While Fashion Week launches in New York, Intel and Opening Ceremony reveal MICA, a functional piece and the result of the companies’ unique collaboration.

Fashion is all about creativity and pushing the envelope, making people fall in love and covet the truly beautiful and unique. It’s about unexpected relationships where materials and creative minds collide to blow the top off tradition.

Today is no exception. As the doors open to Fashion Week in New York, a fashion designer and a global technology company have teamed up to reveal a spectacular piece of jewelry that women everywhere will want to know only one thing: where can I get it?

At the forthcoming Opening Ceremony Spring/Summer 2015 fashion show (Sunday of Fashion Week), Opening Ceremony and Intel Corporation will introduce the smart bracelet developed from their landmark collaboration — MICA (My Intelligent Communication Accessory), designed by Opening Ceremony, engineered by Intel. MICA is a feminine fashion accessory with communications capabilities, conceived and designed from start to finish in collaboration with a fashion designer and a global technology company.

Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim partnered with Intel to create a product that you’ll wear because you want to.

MICA marks the first time a bracelet combines luxury materials and semi-precious gems with technology and communications capabilities. While the companies are keeping those capabilities a hot secret until the jewelry comes out for Holiday 2014, fashionistas will be able to see the designs at Opening Ceremony’s impossible-to-get-tickets-to show on Sunday, September 7th.

MICA’s groundbreaking design combines semi-precious gems and water snakeskin with advanced technology, including communications capabilities and wireless charging support. MICA will be available in two styles constructed of premium finishes with a curved sapphire glass touchscreen display.

One style will feature black watersnake skin, pearls from China, and lapis stones from Madagascar, while the other style will feature white watersnake skin, tiger’s eye from South Africa, and obsidian from Russia.

“We are so excited to be one of the first fashion companies to work alongside a tech company like Intel. It’s great because each of us bring together what we are good at,” said Humberto Leon, co-founder of Opening Ceremony.

“On our end, we bring the aesthetics, visuals and usage of the product, like all the daily social aspects of what that bracelet can be for people. Intel has really welcomed our input into how to transform this technology into something really usable by real people. That is what we are most excited about,” he said.

Today, the innovative results of the intensive concept and design process are revealed with the first images of MICA. Opening Ceremony and Intel commissioned photographer Collier Schorr to capture models Kirsten Owen and Ajak Deng with MICA, together with looks from Opening Ceremony’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection, in these first images of the bracelet.

Last year, Intel created a New Devices Group, whose mandate is to investigate what new kinds of devices will help drive the next stage of the microprocessor revolution. Intel’s Make It Wearable Challenge, which challenged innovators to come up with the next big thing in wearables, announced its top ten finalists last week. By finding budding designers and partnering with fashion leaders, Intel is able to bring the technology to help great minds outside of the technology industry launch innovative ideas.